Many consumers have the desire for self-expression through “personalized” content. With rapid adoption of digital photography, many amateur images have been captured and used to create photo-driven products such as personal photobooks, calendars and scrapbooks. There are many applications, however, in which a user may want to merge an image of a person into another image to create the impression that the person was actually present in that image. One example application of this type is “personalized” merchandise that mashes up commercial content (e.g., images of characters, actors, sports stars, and other celebrities) with the users personal images. Although it is possible to merge images of people into other image content using powerful photo editing tools, such as Adobe® Photoshop®, these tools require advanced skills and extensive manual effort.
What are needed are improved systems and methods of compositing images into target images.